182 ] 



THE SEAT 



OF ... . . 



MR. H. M. GIBBS 



BARROW COURT, 



SOMERSET, 



SOME five miles south-westward from the goodly city 

 of Bristol, in the pleasant land of Somerset, stands a 

 house of name and fame in the West Country, and a 

 place of very great note indeed. Barrow Court, the 

 residence of Mr. Gibbs, is a house of which the history 

 has been greatly chequered, and which has been valued by 

 many who, through the inevitable passage of generations 

 or the slings and arrows of ungentle Fortune, have been 

 severed from it evermore. It has at length lighted upon good 

 and seemly days, wherein, brought to new honour by its 

 possessor, it stands as an exemplar of many excellent things, 

 and a triumph admirably conceived. When the work of 

 reconstruction began there remained the Jacobean doorway 

 of the old house, most of the walls, windows, old chimney- 

 pieces, stucco ceilings, and other features, one end of the 

 farmhouse part alone having been rebuilt, and the Georgian 

 drawing-room being replaced by a library and bedrooms over. 

 But there was scope for much thinking before the plan of 

 the construction could shape itself fully. Then the gardens, 

 with their short terrace walk above the field below, their 

 shrubbery, and large kitchen garden, were to be restored in 

 beauty and to be invested with new and unfamiliar charms. 

 Visions of sunny courts, sequestered alleys, and fine classic 



garden-houses seemed to be mapped in the survey. It was 

 a work which Mr. Gibbs placed before him when he took 

 possession of the place analogous to that achieved at Athel- 

 hampton in the neighbouring county of Dorset, at Great 

 Tangley Manor in Surrey, and at Old Place, Lindfield, Sussex 

 Mr. F. Inigo Thomas was the architect employed. 



In ancient times this Somerset Barrow was in the hands 

 of the famous Geoffrey, Bishop of Coutances, possessor of 

 many manors, but, when it came again to the Crown, William 

 Rufus granted it to Robert Fitz-Harding, whose son married 

 a Gournay. Thus it received its distinctive appellation of 

 Barrow Gournay, though the high land to the westward, 

 where now Barrow Court stands, became known as Minchin 

 Barrow, sometimes called " Barwe." There a Gournay, or 

 a Fitz-Harding before him, founded a nunnery, dedicated to 

 St. Mary and St. Edward, and afterwards to the Holy Trinity. 

 The Gournays of Barrow Gurney died out in the time of 

 Edward I., their possessions passing to the Ap-Adams, and 

 from them by conveyance to the Berkeleys, to whom 

 succeeded the Comptons in the reign of Henry VIII. 



It was, however, from the dissolution of the priory that 

 Barrow Court had its origin. The fallen house was granted 

 by Henry for the space of five years, at a rental, to one John 



THE NORTH FRONT. 



